GOP divide being created by coronavirus pandemic
Debate building on what party’s agenda should be in future
Questions over whether the government should play a more active role in protecting Americans from global shocks such as the coronavirus pandemic have exposed a widening divide in the Republican Party over whether the smallgovernment, free-market brand of conservatism at the heart of its agenda — and a top priority of its biggest donors — is out of step with the times.
The debate traces some of the same ideological fault lines that run through the party over President Donald Trump’s economic and trade policies, which excite many of the voters who are drawn to his nationalist appeals but alarm the party’s more traditional, probusiness wing.
In one of the most ambitious proposals from this group of new nationalists who are challenging a generation of Republican orthodoxy, Congress would mandate that certain products deemed essential to the national interest — such as medicine, protective equipment including masks and materials used to build telecommunications infrastructure — are manufactured in the United States.
The growing push is happening on Capitol Hill and in the pages of the right’s most influential publications, and it is being led by prominent conservative lawmakers, writers and policy experts.
This week they will begin a new phase of their campaign with help from Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, who argue in essays in a new online journal that the coronavirus has exposed the nation’s need to be more aggressive and innovative with its laws so it can better protect itself from adversarial powers such as China.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a choice as a country not to confront this,” Rubio said in an interview.
Too often, he said, conservatives automatically oppose policies that impose new rules for American businesses, “and somehow you’re Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders” for supporting them. In reality, Rubio added, the heavy hand of the government can be helpful in cases such as this, where it is clear that the U.S. has become too reliant on Chinese manufacturing.
“If in our public policy we are going to incentivize certain behavior, certain activities, it should be behavior and activities that are good for the country,” Rubio said.
Oren Cass, the founder of American Compass, a new group that is publishing the essays by Cotton and Rubio and plans to host events that highlight similar themes, said this moment of national crisis was “almost tailor-made to bring a lot of these issues to the fore.”
Conservatives such as Cass believe that the traditional Republican economic view is not only hamstringing the country’s ability to protect itself but also hurting the party with the voters whom Trump brought in — and who are not sharing in the vast wealth gains at the very top of the ladder.
For years, Republicans have hewed to the idea that businesses generally know what is best for them and the economy, and that the best public policy leaves decisions largely to business owners and the free market. This has guided a generation of policy that favors deregulation and free trade.
But since Trump’s election — and his efforts to punish China for its trade practices and U.S. companies that profit from sending jobs to countries where labor is cheaper — many Republicans have pushed their party to embrace the more nationalist elements of the president’s economic agenda.
Paul Winfree, director of economic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, said the right was still adjusting to Trump’s influence on policy.
“I think that a number of people have been trying to make sense of their own worldviews about politics and how that intersects with economic policy after Trump was elected,” he said. “And that is definitely affecting this debate.”
J.D. Vance, the author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy” — which chronicled the despair in parts of rural America that helped fuel the rise of a figure such as Trump — said the work being done at American Compass, where he is a contributing writer, was ultimately part of the larger debate over what happens to the Republican Party once Trump is no longer leading it.
And the hope for him and like-minded Republicans is that they can shape that future.
“Among a type of establishment Republican, there’s definitely been this hope that when Trump goes, all of this stuff will disappear,” Vance said. “But if the trends in American politics continue, there’s just no way to imagine a Republican Party that doesn’t have a substantially different platform in 20 years.”
“That doesn’t mean the establishment can’t win a lot of battles in the short term.”